Talk:History of logarithms

Is the passage re Varasena reliable?
The passage in this article strongly suggests that "ardhacheda" or "ardhaccheda" is a term that can be applied only to powers of two, and is defined in a way that means essentially the binary logarithm. However, in The Crest of the Peacock Joseph gives a very different interpretation of this term: that it can be applied to any number (not only a power of two) and gives the number of factors of two by which it can be divided without leaving a remainder. Joseph's interpretation is not a logarithm (even though Joseph himself says it is), and should not be described as if it were a logarithm; it is instead much more like a p-adic order. But besides Gupta here and Joseph (both more popular than scholarly) I am having difficulty resolving this question, and I am aware that the subject of Indian discoveries in mathematics is filled both with parallel or earlier discoveries of Western mathematics and pitfalls involving nationalist claims for far more than can be justified by the original sources. Are there other search terms I should be searching for to find more-scholarly sources for this material? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:53, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on History of logarithms. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160527234454/http://www.math.umt.edu/tmme/vol5no2and3/tmme_vol5nos2and3_a14_pp.337_344.pdf to http://www.math.umt.edu/tmme/vol5no2and3/tmme_vol5nos2and3_a14_pp.337_344.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 03:36, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Removed text
The following text was removed for reasons given below:
 * The natural logarithm was first described by Nicholas Mercator in his work Logarithmotechnia published in 1668, although the mathematics teacher John Speidell had already in 1619 compiled a table of what were effectively natural logarithms, based on Napier's work.

Euclid Speidell published, his father John is more obscure. Mercator's contribution has been otherwise profiled. — Rgdboer (talk) 02:29, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Your change obscures the distinction between logarithms as a general topic (including other basis and Napier's offset logarithms) and the natural logarithm more specifically, and removes the explicit credit to Mercator for inventing the natural logarithm. After your change, the section titled "Natural logarithm" now has five paragraphs of text about what appears to be other stuff before offhandedly mentioning the natural log at the end of a block quote and then appearing to give credit to Euler for inventing it. And the history section of our natural logarithm article waffles by saying that the solution to the hyperbolic quadrature by Saint-Vincent and Sarasa "had the properties now associated with the natural logarithm" without saying that it IS the natural logarithm function, or even that it was recognized to be a logarithm. This history does indeed need clarification, but I think your change may have done the opposite. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:53, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your observations. At 1615 Napier should be higher than natural logarithm. The decimal shift with 107 is curious since it is claimed that Napier used decimals, promulgated in Europe by Stevin in De Thiende (1585). Napier worked close to but not exactly with natural logarithm. Efforts to find logarithmus naturalis in Mercator have come up empty, perhaps an editor can supply a page number. The five authors cited worked geometrically before Euler introduced exponential functions to provide a fascile approach. Corrections by a fellow editor are expected. — Rgdboer (talk) 18:51, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, but you're still not explaining why you are pushing all this other stuff, which is not actually the natural logarithm, into the section specifically titled to be about natural logarithms. If I want to read about the early history of logarithms, before natural logarithms were introduced, I will go elsewhere in the article. If I want to read about the history of the natural logarithm, specifically and explicitly, then I don't want to have to go searching for it among a haystack of not-very-relevant material. And your "efforts to find..." are problematic, because that's not how Wikipedia content should work. We should work on the basis of what reliable sources on the history of mathematics say (such as the MacTutor and Cajori sources, which you removed) not on our own original research into the history of these topics. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

The name Logarithm - from where arises?!
Please, include references. Alicupe (talk) 12:56, 8 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Form this article under Napier: 'Napier first called L an "artificial number", but later introduced the word "logarithm" to mean a number that indicates a ratio: λόγος (logos) meaning proportion, and ἀριθμός (arithmos) meaning number.' Perhaps this fact should be easier to find.--agr (talk) 13:23, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

First tables produced by a machine?
What was the first actually existing printed book of logarithms that was produced by any kind of automatic system (machine, computer, whatever you may call it), i.e. the calculations and the typesetting not carried out by hand? If you know please add the information. I'm not talking about unrealized or partially realized projects, only those that actually led to publication. -- 2003:C0:9708:800:1A07:7E20:B066:1ECB (talk) 15:58, 5 June 2024 (UTC)


 * There were many tables produced using previous (manual) work as part of the process but then computed with the help of mechanical arithmetic devices. Does that satisfy your requirements, or you want something implemented entirely from scratch? Edit: for this kind of question you might want to try asking WP:RD/MA. –jacobolus (t) 23:18, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm kind of skeptical that the timing of how late it was still useful to produce new books of log tables, and how early it was possible to produce an entirely automated typeset book, leave enough of a window for this sort of thing to exist. It's possible that there might have existed lower-quality books of computer printouts rather than typesetting; those might have been possible as early as the 1950s and it's plausible that someone from that time might have thought such a thing useful. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:02, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Here's an example logarithm table from 1910 with an explanation of the calculation. –jacobolus (t) 00:01, 6 June 2024 (UTC)